1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is multi-needle tufted machines and methods and particularly looper elements which engage the yarn loops on one side of the fabric for the purpose of cutting same into a pile.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art includes several methods of making the cut pile and loop pile including carving or shearing after tufting and perhaps a more common use of a loop engaging member sometimes called a looper in conjunction with a knife which cuts a loop to make a pair of straight pile fibres. It has been possible to tuft a high-low fabric (carpet) where the high fibres were cut from loops but the low fibres were still in the low loop form because of the difficulty in cutting both high or long loops and low or short loops in the same row of stitching. Therefore it is quite common to see carpet which has a high cut pile but low loop mixed in the same row. Some prior art procedures required backdrawing (See Boyles U.S. Pat. No. 2,876,441) in order to make the low pile or loops and therefore make it difficult to cut the low loops. It is desirable to have a pattern which includes both high cut pile and low cut pile in the same row of stitching or in combination of several high cut and several low cut or other combinations thereof and to do this on a conventional machine in a continuous manner. This has not been practical in the art previously because of the limitations mentioned above with respect to the fitting and cutting of both the high loops and the low loops in the same row of stitching and the speed of which the backing material moves and the machine operates. The prior art discloses a number of different loopers (loop engaging fingers or hooks) for use in making a high cut pile. Among the prior art is U.S. Pat. No. 3,084,645 which discloses a hook and cooperating knife arranged to form cut pile together with a means for selectively backdrawing the yarn to pull selected loops off the free end of the hook before they are cut by the knife in order to form loop pile. The short loops are made by tensioning the yarn so that it slips off the hook when the yarn is backdrawn which requires the use of some means to close the free end of the hook to prevent the withdrawal of loops from the hook which in the patent is in the form of a yieldable spring. The present arrangement not only provides a method for making both high cut pile and low cut pile off the same looper, but does so without the use of springs or other movable or yieldable parts since the looper element of the present device is one rigid structure.